The present invention relates to various technology fields, e.g. radio resource management, data base handling, network virtualization, software defined networking and network optimization.
Today mobile networks experience some exciting changes, technology wise and business wise. A schematic communication network 100 is shown in FIG. 1 comprising a global network controller 101 connected to a network controller 102 and to an application 103. The network control 102 is connected via northbound interfaces to a control layer 104 comprising a mediation layer 105, a TRA-SDN controller 106 and a NE+-SDN controller 107. Additional connections are provided by interfaces between the control layer 104 and the application layer 103. Furthermore, the control layer 104 is connected to a transport layer 108 as well.
In this context, it should be mentioned that new emerging technologies like cloud computing and software defined networking allow to have most of all networking functions run as applications (e.g. a Gateway application, Gw app in FIG. 1) in data centers on virtual machines (VM) which are organized by a cloud management system Infrastructure-As-A-Service (IaaS) entity with a cloud orchestration system CFW (Cloud Frame Work) organizing the deployment of applications in a data center. This way, applications become “resources” as well (aside from frequencies, bandwidth, spectrum or the like) that can be utilized on demand depending on networking demands—but those can also be offered to third party Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) to run applications on their behalf still leaving them full control on the applications themselves.
Similar developments happen in the transport network when SDN technologies are employed: via SDN controllers' data forwarding network elements NE and forwarding elements with additional capabilities (e.g. for GTP tunnel handling) NE+ can be configured by a network controller or by applications themselves. While SDN offers capabilities to configure and manipulate layer 2 and 3, optical layers can be configured accordingly via network management systems NMS and planning tools that offer alike control interfaces to applications/network controllers (northbound interfaces n/b). Network controllers can utilize transport engineering databases TED and path computation elements PCE to get a topology view on the transport network. This way, also transport can be considered a “resource” that can be configured and put in place on demand—and which also can be traded with 3rd parties.
Finally, also radio resources (not shown in FIG. 1) like spectrum will become “resources” that can be utilized on demand for internal operator use or made available for 3rd parties. In a future eco-system resources from all domains (radio, transport, mobile core) may become manageable, tradable and available on demand with cloud computing and software defined networking being the enabling technologies.
In this eco system this global network controller will require very sophisticated mechanisms and algorithms of how to trade given resources—physical ones (like spectrum and bandwidth) and virtual ones (applications on VMs).
It is assumed that wireless telecommunication will change dramatically within the next 10 years. To be prepared for the challenges caused by increase in traffic, number of mobile devices and new services that require higher traffic bandwidths the METIS project has been started end of 2012. METIS, which stands for >>Mobile and Wireless Communications Enablers for the Twenty-twenty (2020) Information Society<<, is a co-funded project of the European Commission with the target to evaluate and demonstrate key technologies components for the future 5G next generation mobile and wireless communications system.
After first discussions, the METIS consortium has identified spectrum availability as a key issue to meet the future requirements on wireless telecommunications.